


on rebuilding

by quillquiver



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not sorry, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Supportive Gaang, Touch-Starved Zuko, everyone has been seriously affected by the war but everyone is healing, everyone loves each other and it's glorious, excessive amounts of awkward flirting, excessive use of bending as a flirting technique and romantic device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27268828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quillquiver/pseuds/quillquiver
Summary: It all comes to a head on a balcony in Ba Sing Se.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 275





	on rebuilding

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't been inspired to write something that wasn't Supernatural in literal years, and it was weird and exciting to stretch those muscles. This is entirely [Bobby's](https://crxstalcas.tumblr.com/tagged/zutara-fanart) fault. Her art should come with a warning, because you too will re-watch ATLA in a weekend and then spend three days writing fic. 
> 
> The last scene is inspired by her spooning piece and I refuse to apologize. You can find it [here](https://crxstalcas.tumblr.com/post/632436415108628480/little-spoon-zuko-rights).

It comes to a head on a balcony in Ba Sing Se. 

Once a month they pile into the house in the Upper Ring. It started as a way of ensuring they’d see each other—of making sure everyone was safe, and happy, and alive. Adjusting has been difficult; they slept piled atop one another in the common area for most of the first year.

Besides, despite the fact that they’re all technically ambassadors to the Fire Nation, opportunities to just be together are often few and far between—politics leaves little room for field trips and nostalgia, so they’d agreed to make room for that themselves.

Over the past eight years, the house has evolved from a place of refuge to a place of gathering.

Zuko sometimes still needs a break from all the noise—one of the side-effects of not having to worry about getting ambushed is how _big_ they get to be—and unsurprisingly, it’s Katara who notices he’s missing. Aang watches her debate with herself for a minute before heading out after him. He smiles and turns back to Toph, settling in as she extols the virtues of magma bending. 

“Hey Twinkle Toes, you okay?”

“…Yeah,” he says. And he means it. His family is safe and sound and has been for the past eight years, and they’re together. He’s no longer who he was, but he… isn’t upset about that. They built the world they wanted to live in, and now they’re doing just that. He’s happy.

Toph quirks a brow.

“Really,” Aang says. “I'm great.”

***

Zuko is hunched over the railing.

“Can I join you?”

He barely nods, head swaying forward, forehead pressing to the wood. He’s tactile in a way Katara didn’t expect when she first met him, but touch between them has become second nature after so many years. Without hesitation, she mirrors his position, jostling him a little. His bad eye, always narrowed in a slit, seems to narrow even further and she grins. Loops her arm through his. 

“It’s nice out,” she says. “Wanna go for a walk?”

The rain has stopped, the moon peeking out from behind dark clouds, and Katara laces their fingers and leads him deep into the city. She pulls at him like she always does, keeping an eye on the slowly growing smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as they stroll past shops and night markets and—

Zuko stops.

Katara stumbles back into him. He smells like cedar, as he always does, the scent of burning woodchips clinging even to his Earth Kingdom clothes. “This is the Firelight Fountain,” he breathes, staring unseeing at the structure in the middle of the pretty square. He huffs a faint laugh—whatever memory is attached to this place; it doesn’t seem to be bad. Katara squeezes his hand as he shakes himself out of it.

“I went on a date, here, once,” he says.

Of all the things she had been expecting, that hadn’t been one of them.

Katara knows Zuko has dated—Mai, at the very least—but somehow it’s strange to think of him, young and lost and angry, fondly remembering something so normal from before the war ended. Not bad, just… strange; it brings her right back to seeing him in his uncle’s tea shop, and the panic that had gripped her upon hearing his voice. She pushes past it. “So, how’d it go?”

“Huh?”

Katara moves to sit on the lip of the fountain. “The _date_ , Doctor Love.”

He blushes until his cheeks match his scar, and—maybe it’s not such a stretch, to think of him here. Maybe Prince Zuko had shyly reached for his date’s hand and threaded their fingers together. Maybe he had paid for dinner and suggested they go on a walk. Maybe his anger and confusion had made him halting and awkward all the sweeter for it.

“It was… nice,” he says, as if surprised that the memory is a good one. “Her name was Jin. She, uh, came to the tea shop a lot, where I worked with Uncle.”

“I remember.”

He turns to her sharply. “You do?”

Katara nods. “I had stopped to get a cup, one day,” she says, “but I heard your voice and—” She cuts herself off. Shrugs. “In the upper ring, right? Where Iroh’s shop is now?”

“Middle Ring,” Zuko replies. He moves to sit down next to her. Presses their arms together. Reaches for her. He does this, sometimes; will open her fingers and trace along the lines of her palm instead of holding her hand. He’d confessed to her, once, raw and in the early hours of the morning, that he was sometimes so overwhelmed by the idea of touching someone, he got angry instead. “Before Uncle got his own, we worked in Pao’s tea shop. We were servers.”

Katara swallows her laughter, unexpected but not unwelcome. She leans against him more heavily. “The idea of you working in a tea shop—especially angsty teenage you—will never not be funny to me.”

Where Zuko would’ve glared at her years ago, now he only rolls his eyes. Settles in more comfortably. Glances at her in that way he sometimes does, like she’s a puzzle he’s trying to solve. Not for the first time, Katara wonders what happens once he figures her out, and foolishly hopes he never does.

The soft light from the lamps reflects off the wet stone of the square and paints everything gold. It’s beautiful. It’s _safe._ It had been hard to adjust to peace, at first; to remember that there was no need to run, or hide, or fight. It’s… less of one, now, but Katara doesn’t think that’ll ever go away. She’ll have nightmares about dying Fire Nation soldiers until she’s gone, herself; will be haunted by every time she blood-bended; will wake in a sweat, panicked when Aang and Sokka and Toph aren’t beside her.

She’ll wake panicked, too, on the nights Zuko sleeps spooned against her— _There’s safety in numbers_ —only to remember that they’re no longer enemies. He’s always up by the time she’s clawed her way back to consciousness. Katara knows light sleeping comes with living outside for so long—she does the same when he has his own nightmares: violent things filled with fire that leave him clutching at his face and chest and heaving long, gasping sobs.

Her own fear is quiet.

She holds him as if he’ll disappear; her last tether to reality, face buried in his neck and clutching at his back just as tightly as he holds her to his chest. No amount of _you’re okays_ will ever make the nightmares stop, but they’re appreciated, nonetheless. The first time one of them had woken screaming, they’d been back in her village, and her father had almost laid waste to the Fire Lord right then and there— _Dad no **stop** I was dreaming! It was a dream!_

Zuko had been right; there is safety in numbers, and it’s nice to know Katara won’t wake alone if her subconscious decides to run through its detailed reel of little horrors. Admittedly, it’s dangerous at first; she still has a faint scar on her forearm from when Zuko half-woke from a nightmare and set the room on fire. He’d clipped Katara in the process, and the burn had been so bad even she hadn’t been able to completely heal it.

They’d been in the Fire Nation, then, and he’d been all at once inconsolable and impossible to deal with. Angry and upset in equal measure, constantly forcing everyone to tiptoe around him and his mood swings until she’d finally confronted him in the courtyard. Like almost all arguments they’d had back then, it had ended in an explosive display of bending—not to injure, not to train, just… to let off steam. _I’m a monster_ , he’d eventually yelled at her, collapsing to the ground.

_Get over yourself! You made a mistake—you have people counting on you, now, Zuko. You can’t just—_

_Shut up!_

_No. Get up._

_Stop—!_

_Get **up**! _

If anyone had told her even a month before Sozin’s Comet that she, eight years later, would count Prince Zuko among her closest friends and confidantes, she would have laughed in their face. But they’re good for each other, she thinks. They push each other. Challenge each other. The Avatar had been needed in all four corners of the world immediately after Ozai had been defeated, and Katara and Zuko had had duties to their own peoples. She had missed Aang like she was missing a limb, and Zuko had never had any kind of real friend, before… it only stood to reason that they’d gravitated towards each other—especially after the last Agni Kai. When Katara had explained this to Gran Gran, the older woman had nodded. _You’re fire and water_ , she’d said, _two halves of a perfectly balanced whole._

_Exactly!_

_Mm,_ she’d said. _And he’s your other half._

 _Wait, no_ —

Sighing, Katara leans her head against his shoulder, breathing deeply to try and bring herself back to the present. When she comes to, Zuko is watching her closely, his thumb pressed against her wrist as if to measure her heartbeat. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

He shrugs. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere important.”

“Hasn’t happened in a while.”

Katara considers this, turning to him with a smile. “Yeah,” she says, clearly giddy with the realization. “I guess it hasn’t.”

He smiles back, small and crooked, and Katara is suddenly reminded of the fact that that when he laughs—really laughs—he does so with his entire body. Her heart races and she clears her throat, trying to remind herself that this thing between them needs to stay where it is. That there’s too much going on. That there always will be.

_We built the world we wanted to live in, Katara._

She makes a show of looking around again. “This is a great date spot.” When Zuko tenses, Katara pretends she doesn’t feel it, just as she ignores the way her own breath hitches when he presses their palms together and laces their fingers.

“I didn’t bring Jin here,” Zuko admits quietly. “She brought me.”

“Yeah?”

He nods. “We went out for dinner and then she led us here, but the lights were all burnt out. So, I made her cover her eyes, and I lit them. And then she…” he trails off, blushing faintly. “It was my first real date. In the palace, it wasn’t—with Mai, I had never done anything like that.”

Katara squeezes their joined hands. “I’m glad you got to have that.”

“Yeah,” Zuko breathes. When he turns to her, his smile is sad, his other fingertips floating up to brush his own bottom lip. “I had wanted to—to see her again, or something, but I just.” He looks out at the square, helplessly. “She kissed me and I ran.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not your fault. It was just… the way things were. And I had been so _conflicted_ —” He cuts himself off, turning away. He still feels shame for how long it took to get here, but even that is healing, slowly. Zuko takes a deep breath and turns back, quirking a brow. “What was your first date like?”

Katara bites her lip. She tries not to let on how increasingly precarious this all feels. “I…. never really had one. When Dad left with the rest of the warriors, the oldest boy in our village was Sokka, and then we met Aang.”

“What,” Zuko teases. “The Avatar never took you out on a date?”

Katara rolls her eyes. “Not when he was twelve.” She frowns. “It was confusing, you know? We were trying to save the world, but I loved him—I _love_ him, it just… turns out it wasn’t that kind of love.”

“So no date.”

“No,” Katara says. They’ve talked around a lot of this, over the years, most of it navigated by halting touches and explosions of anger and grief. But never like this. Never so open. She wonders if he notices her palm sweating. “We were always so busy flying around the world it never happened, and then after—well, you know; it was busy in a different way. I just…”

“Yeah.”

It’s a partial lie, if she’s being honest with herself; not because she’s wanted a romantic partner all thee years, but because the thought has only recently begun to cross her mind. Besides, she never felt she needed one; during the war, she and Aang had always been each other’s person, and then after… She and Zuko had been joined at the hip since the last Agni Kai—

Katara squeezes her eyes shut at the sudden, vivid onslaught of him jumping front of her; of his twitching, limp body and Azula’s refusal to _let her heal him_ and it’s all she can do to wrench her hand away from his and press it over his hidden scar.

“Katara,” he murmurs. She can feel the vibration of his voice against her palm.

“Just—one second,” she replies, breathing deeply. There are no tears this time, at least, despite the lump in her throat. “I’m fine. I’m just—I just got stuck. I’m fine.”

The wave of panic passes after a moment, and when Katara opens her eyes it’s to find Zuko looking at her yet again. She doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want him to push, and in a blink he’s flicking one of her hair loops. “So,” he says. “What about now?”

“What about now, what?” Katara knuckles at her breastbone with one hand, even as the other grips the edge of Zuko’s tunic. Despite the fact that she feels weak, she’s grateful for the subject change.

Zuko looks resolutely ahead. He swallows thickly. “Dating.”

“No eligible young bachelors in the village,” she replies, forcing her tone into something playful and teasing and _not shaky_. “Remember?”

He jostles her with a fraction of his usual force. “Not what I meant.”

“I mean,” she takes a deep breath. Tells herself she’s still coming off a flashback. That it’s a second wave of panic and not the subject of conversation that has her feeling newly unbalanced. It’s probably both. “…I would,” she eventually says. “For the right person.”

“So no casual dating.”

It’s too much, too precarious, too dangerous. “No time. What about you, oh powerful Fire Lord?” Katara smoothly counters. “Anyone you’ve got your eye on?”

The plan backfires _spectacularly_.

Zuko stares at her, long enough for her cheeks to flare and her heart to race. It isn’t that Katara’s never thought about this; she’s thought about it a lot recently, every time surprised to find that she liked the idea a little bit more, until one day he’d slipped under the covers with soap suds still on his cheek and— _oh._

But being Zuko’s friend had been safe… having feelings for him? Wanting to share a bed every night and be together a-and touch him every way a person could be touched? That felt like a betrayal. It wasn’t—it _isn’t_ , but—

“…It’s complicated,” Zuko finally answers. The corner of his mouth quirks up, and his whole face changes. She swallows thickly.

“How complicated?”

He blushes to the tips of his hair, and Katara watches him intently. “We have, uh, history,” he says, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. _Mai._ His eyes widen. “—But it’s not Mai!” He blushes even more deeply. “I—I mean, um. We’ve never—me and this—girl. She—she’s, uh, a powerful bender—not that that’s why I like her! She’s beautiful, too—but that’s—um, and her personality a-and she’s, uh, crafty? And nice! A nice… girl… and, uh…” He makes an embarrassed, strangled noise and his head flops into his hands, palms scrubbing over his hair. “Ugh.”

 _Hello! Zuko here!_ The thought comes to her unbidden and she can’t hide her grin, even when her heart beats like it’s trying to make a break for it. Shrugging in a way that feels a lot less casual than she hopes is coming off, Katara allows herself to lean in, intending to kiss him on the cheek. She means to say something smooth at the same time— _flirting with fire_ , Sokka had called it, pointing out the way she’s taken to pushing her own firmly set boundaries—

But Zuko senses her coming and immediately looks up.

His skull connects with Katara’s nose painfully, their twin yelps echoing across the square. Katara can already feel blood trickling onto her dress.

“Katara—Katara, I am _so sorry_ , I—”

She waves him off, looking up and grimacing as she feels around her nose. It’s not broken, but it’s going to bruise if she doesn’t heal it immediately. She gathers water in her palm and—

 _Riiiiiiiiiiip_.

Zuko leans forward, a strip torn from his tunic and pressed gingerly beneath her nose. “Does it hurt?” he demands, looking at the injury nervously. “It was an accident, I swear. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

His eyes are wild in a way that speaks to an impending attack and she presses her whole hand to his chest for the second time that night. He barely pauses.

“I really didn’t mean it, Katara. I just—”

“Hey, look at me.” She accompanies the request with bloodied fingers beneath his chin, gently guiding him until they’re looking directly at one another. “It’s nothing,” she says. Low. Sure. Confident. “You’ve got the biggest and hardest head in the Four Nations; there was no way you weren’t gonna give me a nosebleed. If anything, I shouldn’t have leaned so close.”

He narrows his eyes, caught between feeling awful and offended, and Katara smiles encouragingly.

“Seriously, Zuko, I’m fine. And hey, I’m a waterbender, so I can heal this no problem.”

He nods eventually if a little hesitantly, chewing at his bottom up and frowning into the middle distance. She sighs in relief when the water touches her bruising nose. He cringes in sympathy. “I’m—”

Katara puts hand on his knee in an attempt to silence him. “It was an accident. It happens.” He looks up like he’s been caught out, but she continues. She’s gotten good that this; distracting him from getting stuck. “…I mean, yeah, your head is definitely hard, so it’s not like it was _fun_ , but—” She pauses, then, finishing up in her healing and looking thoughtfully at the stained cloth in her hand. “We can have fun.” Katara quickly drops the thing to the ground, bending a sizeable amount of water right at Fire Lord Zuko’s poor conflicted face.

He quickly goes from ‘Hopeless Martyr’ to ‘Drowned Cat’.

She can’t not laugh.

Zuko narrows his eyes and the water starts coming off of him in steam, the stuff rising off his shoulders and curling down towards his feet like he’s some kind of grumpy, disgruntled dragon. Flames lick at his fingers.

Katara is still laughing when he chases her around the square.

They haven’t done this in a long time; playing, chasing—bending in a context that isn’t training for skill or _just in case_. Katara never thought she’d think of fire as gentle or playful, but it can be when shaped by his hands. The square echoes with the roar and hiss of their push-and-pull until they’re both half-soaked, fruitlessly hiding behind thin wooden poles and sliding through puddles. The fountain is almost drained, there might be someone yelling over all the noise, and they’re pretty much guaranteed to end in property damage, but Katara can’t stop smiling.

“Katara, don’t—!”

She trips him into the fountain’s basin, cackling right up until she feels heat forcing her in the same direction. With a well-placed tug she’s falling in after him, both of them scrambling to grab hold of each other’s wrists in victory. They’re yelling and laughing and—

“Zuko, wait— _wait_!”

“Ha! I—”

“Oh _shit_ —”

Guards no longer patrol Ba Sing Se, but considering the noise they made, Katara can understand why they came.

“Come on!” She bends what little water remains in the fountain to force them to their feet, her hand reaching back to grab Zuko’s as she darts down the nearest street.

“Hey,” one of the guards says as they sprint past. “Isn’t that…?”

It’s darker without all the lamps from the square, and Katara only narrowly misses running into a barrel, grinning when Zuko leaps over it to land at her side. He wears an expression of exhilaration she’s sure is matched on her own face, pulling ahead and tugging her down a lane to his left.

“Zuko—”

She throws all her weight into an alley, narrowly missing the handful of guards coming up the street. Hurling herself at the bare stretch of wall between a closed-up cart and a cistern, Katara pulls Zuko towards her and wraps her arms around him, craning her neck in an attempt to peer around the corner. 

“What are you doing?” he says, panicked.

“Sticking it to the paramilitary-industrial complex,” she replies. It’s so dark she can only barely make out his face. “We’ll stay here for a while, and once things die down, we’ll just walk back. Easy.”

“Easy…” Zuko echoes. “We’re barely hidden.”

“It’s dark. It looks like we’re making out.”

“We’re talking against a _wall_ —”

Rolling her eyes, Katara threads her right fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and pulls him towards her. She presses their foreheads together, and fighting the flip of her own stomach, smiles sweetly. “ _Now_ it looks like we’re making out.”

In the dark, Katara can’t tell if Zuko’s wide eyes are because he’s incredulous or embarrassed. She’s honestly not sure which she’d prefer. “Sokka’s the plan guy, okay?” Her own cheeks feel like they’re glowing for how red they must be, and she surreptitiously glances at the mouth of the alley.

She knows they don’t have to stay here.

She knows they could just walk back, and odds are they’d never get caught. She knows that even getting caught wouldn’t be a big deal at this point—helping to save the world might be worth its weight in trauma, but it also results in a level of respect and leniency that continues to make her uncomfortable.

She’s sure Zuko knows this. But instead of protesting, he shuffles closer. He makes a show of it because he’s incapable of not being the world’s biggest drama queen: shivering and pouting with big, round eyes. But his hands buzz with nervous energy when he anchors them on her hips, and she’s so close she can hear his breath shake as it leaves him. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sokka is wriggling his fingers and singing _flirting with fiiiiiiiire_ on repeat, and Katara delicately clears her throat and resolves not to make a total and complete ass of herself.

“So…” Zuko murmurs. “Are you going to dry us, or…?”

Though Katara knows she should, she likes him like this. His clothing sticks to his skin, his hair plastered to his face. He just… looks like anyone else. It suits him. “Why? This is a good look on you.” When Katara musses his hair, Zuko’s mouth twists in a scowl. “It’s like Fire Lords gone wild.”

He makes a sound not unlike a squawk. “You—”

A flurry of footsteps sound just beyond the alley’s entrance and Katara lurches forward to check, her finger pressing to Zuko’s lips. Whether he’s annoyed or stunned or both, it works; the footsteps come and go and the two of them are left alone. Katara grins victoriously. She turns back and—

And they’re close.

They’re _really_ _close._

So close their noses brush with every breath, chests pressed so tightly together Katara is half terrified she’ll be found out from her heart rate alone. Zuko’s lips are parted and she watches his eyes flutter shut. His hands, still planted at her hips, curl into the material of her dress.

Katara swallows thickly. “Okay,” she croaks. “They’re gone.”

His exhale is a huffed whisper of a laugh. High. Nervous. Incredulous. “Great.”

A handful of raindrops fall from the sky and she pretends she’s grateful for the distraction. Extending her right hand, Katara bends the water away from them in an invisible umbrella. “We should… probably get out of here.” She says it just as much for her own benefit as his. Steps out of his arms. Smiles.

“Uh, Katara—” Zuko reaches out, fingers catching her wrist. “…Thanks.”

It’s clearly not what he had originally wanted to say, but the imagined alternative is equals parts exciting and terrifying. Though Katara knows she has no right to be disappointed, she wonders if she’s allowed to be curious. “For what?” she asks.

“Just…” he waves his hands helplessly. “Everything.”

 _Everything_. The yelling, the crying, the arguments—over their shared history, their current motivations, duty and family and their values. The apologies that had followed—in words and sparring sessions and touch, always touch; fingers tangled or curling around wrists, brushing over cheeks, carding through hair. Tracing the bridge of a nose until it scrunches. Pinching the Fire Lord’s side.

 _Everything_ is a big word.

Because for all the hardship, it's also long walks, lounging—endless hours of conversation and teasing, talking until they’d run out of things to say. Playing in ways he never could as a child and she had only indulged in rarely. From a cave deep beneath the nearby palace to standing in an alley in the rain, their grudging acquaintanceship had blossomed into a friendship forged in lightening. And now…?

 _We built the world we wanted to live in, Katara_.

Katara throws her arms around Zuko’s shoulders and pulls him close. He’s tensed as if ready to run, and though he’s wider than he was when they were teenagers, it almost feels like the first time she’d hugged him—when he’d stepped back, startled, and hadn’t really known what to do with his hands.

 _We built the world we wanted to live in, Katara_.

Zuko melts against her; arms tight around her waist, face buried in her neck. Her brows furrow and she bites her lip, something big and bright and terrifying working its way up her chest towards her throat. She allows herself to pull back and press a kiss to the scarred skin right under his eye.

 _We built the world we wanted to live in, Katara_.

Zuko reaches for her free hand before thinking better of it, eyes skittering to the floor as he wipes his palm on his thigh. He forces his gaze back to hers and sets his shoulders, nervous and flushed in the dim. His brow is pinched. 

_Now we get to **live.**_

Katara kisses him.

It’s clumsy, and damp, and warm. She rises to her tiptoes only to almost immediately stumble, and the abrupt movement forces them to pull away—though Zuko makes a valiant effort at trying to follow. His eyes are closed, his mouth beginning to tug up in her favourite crooked grin of his, and she finds herself grinning back.

His eyes flutter open.

They’re both breathing like they’ve run the length of the Earth Kingdom, and Katara feels her heart leap against her ribcage as he leans in again. Their mouths brush and then press and her toes curl in her slippers.

Zuko’s arm circles more securely around her waist and he lifts a little, stumbling back until they’re both pressed against the wall. From there, they devolve into little kisses, short and sweet and so numerous that Katara loses count. The way he feels, the way he makes _her_ feel—distracted, her right hand moves to tangle in Zuko’s damp, dark hair, and with the loss of her bending, a veritable river of water crashes down and drenches them both.

Katara wrenches away from him with a yelp and Zuko splutters. He’s beaming though, so wide that the kiss he presses to her cheek is more teeth than anything else. The one he tries to apply to her mouth goes much the same way and Katara can’t stop herself from laughing, the stuff joyful and loud and contagious, until they’re both clutching at each other and giggling.

“Wait,” he laughs, touching her cheek, then her hair, then gripping her waist. He brushes their noses together. “I—”

Katara pushes his soaked bangs from his forehead. Zuko nuzzles into her palm. When he looks at her, there’s colour high in his cheeks. He stares.

“You…?” she trails off expectantly.

“I can’t remember,” he says ruefully.

And Katara knows she is _literally playing with fire_ , but the opportunity to tease him is too good to pass up. “…Probably had something to do with how crafty I am.”

His eyes widen, a blush exploding across the bridge of his nose.

“Or my powerful bending?”

“You—I—” He narrows his eyes, taking hold of Katara’s wrists and guiding them above her head. He holds her there. “You _are_ a powerful bender,” he says, pressing their palms together as if to prove his point. “And you’re… crafty.”

She bites back a smile.

“What?” he demands. Their hands drop. “Everything I said was true!”

“I’m flattered.”

Zuko squints, leaning in so close her eyes almost cross. She bites her lip to keep from laughing, schooling herself into something she hopes resembles confused innocence, even as he exaggerates the menacing curl of his lip. “You’re making fun of me,” he accuses her.

“I’m not!”

He raises a brow.

“I’m _not_ ,” Katara repeats, unable to stop herself from smiling. “I mean, you’re…”

Zuko’s breath hitches, blush deepening even as he clears his throat and plays at aloofness. He keeps _looking_ at her, though, eyes flitting over her face. He’s gorgeous a lot of the time, but especially like this—earnest, hopeful—and it occurs to Katara, very suddenly, that she’s never really told him all the things she loves about him. It occurs to her that precious few people probably have. 

“You’re beautiful,” she says thoughtfully, seriously, as colour rises in her own cheeks. “Your face. And your eyes.” She can hear him hold his breath when she brushes fingers over the apple of his scarred cheek. “You’re… a good fighter, and sweet and loyal a-and—kind. Brave, too. And smart. _A powerful bender._ And… good.” Katara presses a hand over his heart. “You’re _good_ , Zuko.”

He gives a shaky inhale, biting his lip. Of all things, he moves to _bow_ to her, as if the simple act of telling him her opinion is something worthy of that kind of honour and respect. She grasps his elbows. “I’m not sure I can call you _crafty_ ,” she teases gently. “But you’re a nice boy.”

Though Katara hopes to pull a smile from him, the way he softens around his edges is just as good. There’s something overwhelmingly sweet about him, made only more lovely by the way he wraps his arms around her. “You’re cold,” he murmurs as she shivers against his chest. He’s so _warm_.

Zuko presses his palms to her hips and arms and waist, bending just enough so she can feel their warmth through her waterlogged clothing. She sighs contentedly. Practically melts in his arms. Blushes to the tips of her ears when their eyes meet amongst their shifting; she’s not sure she’s deserving of such open, earnest affection. “I could fall asleep like this,” she mumbles to distract herself.

“Mm,” he hums. “I’m tired, too.”

“We’ve been out all night.”

“Yeah,” he says, as if the whole idea makes him giddy. Clouds are smeared across the sky so there won’t be much of a sunrise, but it’s fast-approaching, anyway. He squeezes her. Rests his head against hers. “This was fun.”

“Mmph, but I can’t _wait_ to do it in bed.” As soon as the words leave her mouth, she regrets them. “This!” she blurts out, scrambling to clarify. “The cuddling. In bed. Because you sleep in a bed. Not that I wouldn’t be sleeping with you—and not that I don’t want to _sleep_ with you. In the future. Eventually! Just—I’m—I’m tired. I’m—”

It takes a second to understand that the way Zuko is shaking in indicative of laughter and not, as her anxieties would have her believe, _crying_ —but she feels little relief in spite of that. It’s mostly mortification, made ten times worse by the fact that _this isn’t even the first time she’s done this_. Because they sleep together. Have been sleeping together. Every night they’re in the same city, they share a bed, and it’s not her fault that talking about it is always suggestive.

Zuko tugs at her hair to get her attention, but Katara resolutely remains buried in his neck. She can hear the shit-eating grin on his face even if she can’t see it. “Let’s go back?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Put me out of my misery.”

He snorts and holds her hand.

***

The house is quiet when they finally stumble through the door. Despite the fact that he has a perfectly good room, Aang is curled up on among the pillows still strewn across the floor of the common area, a lamp lit in its far corner. He’s snoring, and for a split second it’s hard for Katara to remember where she is; that the Avatar is no longer needed in such an immediate capacity, that the large man drooling onto his pillow is, in fact, Aang.

Katara extinguishes the lamp while Zuko pulls Aang’s blanket up to cover his shoulders. When they reach their shared room, there’s a note tacked to the door:

_Tried to wait up—hope you had a good walk._

It’s signed by everyone.

***

It’s surprisingly easy. There’s more touching as they wash their teeth and clean up for bed, but the general motions are the same. Katara shivers into her sleep clothes and practically launches herself at the bed, cuddling into the covers. “Mmm.”

Zuko joins her a moment later. He holds a small, dancing flame in his palm. “Do you need anything?”

Katara shakes her head. The flame snuffs out.

His side is on the left, and the second he settles Katara slots them together, spooning him. Nerves dulled by exhaustion, she presses a kiss to the juncture of his neck and he shivers. Settles in. Slides her thigh over his.

“…Hey,” she eventually whisper-mumbles. She’s half-asleep, lulled there by the motion of Zuko playing with her fingers, but there’s something niggling at the back of her mind; something about building and living, and it rankles until she’s suddenly not asleep at all.

“Mm.”

Katara buries her face into Zuko’s bare back, nose smushed up against his spine. “I love you.” Her voice is muffled, but the way he tenses means he heard her anyway. He remains that way for what feels like a lifetime, long enough for a lump to form in Katara’s throat and her vision to blur. She swallows. Squeezes her eyes shut. Pulls back and—

Zuko yanks at her so hard she almost loses an arm.

She smashes against him, only barely avoiding hitting her face. There’s no space between them now, made only more obvious when he settles back more comfortably against her. She can feel him sigh, shaky, before he presses a pointed kiss to their joined hands. Her palm. The inside of her wrist.

Katara rubs her cheek against him. Holds her breath. Zuko squeezes her hand in answer. “...Me too,” he says hoarsely.

She presses her lips to the notch of his spine, and he huffs. Turns over. They end up nose-to-nose and he doesn’t waste any time; kisses her slow and deep, palm to her cheek, thumb brushing the skin below her eye. It’s hot and sweet and thorough, and they drift apart dazed, smiling stupidly at one another. Zuko presses a chase thing to corner or Katara’s mouth before turning back and pulling her arm over his side. She threads their fingers together. He sighs. “Goodnight,” he murmurs. He sounds sleepy and smiley.

Katara applies her own sleep-smiley kiss to his shoulder in answer.

“Night.”


End file.
